In one program I worked on, the first report built from live data showed a modest, respectable number: a handful of work packages answered in the first week. Then I looked at who had made the edits.
Every change in the tracker had been made by one person, on one day. A colleague had sat down the morning after the kickoff and typed in what the owners had said in the room. Not one owner had touched it.
A true number that tells the wrong story
"A handful answered" was true. It also implied that a handful of owners had committed, and they had not. The tracker held one careful person's record of a meeting: what was said in a room, not who had taken on the work.
So we changed the report to say what had actually happened: the answers so far were transcribed from the session, and no owner had used the tracker yet. It is an uncomfortable line to send upward, but a sponsor who later discovers the proxy will discount every number you send after it.
Engagement is the leading indicator in any program run by people with day jobs. Let a proxy stand in for it and you will report a healthy program right up to the moment the proxy gets tired.
How many answered? Who answered? How many different people did the typing?
Count the editors, not only the edits
Next to the answer rate, I now track the number of distinct editors in the tracker. A healthy program has close to one per owner. When one person does all the typing, the answer rate is really a measure of that person's diligence.
It is not laziness
The tempting reading is that the owners did not care. They were senior people running their own businesses, with a quarter to close. The program was their second job, and a second job is the one you do after the first is finished, which is never.
The fix is not a sterner reminder. Make answering cost almost nothing: one question, a few fixed answers, reachable from a phone between two meetings. Chase once, by name, then report the silence itself. If the owners still do not answer, the tracker has done its job. It has turned a quiet problem into a question the sponsor can ask in the room.
The count tells you how much was said. The edit log tells you who said it.